“Are they dead?”
“More dead than us.” His smile faded and he bobbed his head like an owl again.
I finally got a hold of my anger and pondered my next question for Entas. The man was not trying to attack me, but he had some strange agenda that prevented him from being direct.
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“That depends.” His smile grew bigger. “What do you need help with?”
“Earlier you said that my daughter was important.” I paused to gauge the man’s reaction. His scent still bothered me, but I did not want to speak to him about it yet.
“I did.” His smile was gone now.
“What did you mean?”
He hesitated for a few moments and then pursed his weirdly-shaped lips.
“She is a creation of you and Kaiyer. Is that not a good enough reason?” He smiled again and seemed delighted by his own response. It was not a good enough reason, but I had already learned enough of the man to know that he would only say something cryptic or ridiculous if I pressed for clarification.
Exhaustion hit me suddenly, but it was only in my mind. This man was exasperating, but he was the only one here. He was my only hope for answers.
Even if he was not giving them to me at the moment.
“Will you help me save her?”
“Of course.” His smile grew larger. “It will not be easy though. Even now, your enemies plan to kill Kaiyer before he can obtain an Ovule.”
“I am used to challenges.”
“No. You are used to slight inconveniences. If you really want your daughter to live, the path will be the most difficult you have ever traveled, and we may not be successful. If you also want to save Kaiyer, that will make it even more challenging.” He bobbed his head and the smile grew larger. “But it is not impossible.”
“I am willing to do whatever it takes.”
“Even if it means she will never see you again?”
My chest fluttered and my breath caught.
“Well, nothing is impossible. You can do anything you want.”
“You said earlier I could stay here with you. Is there a way we can save my daughter from here, or do I need to return to my world?”
“We will drift through the cosmos like ghosts of memories.” He nodded at his own words. “As such, there is only so much you can do to manipulate our creations. We do not want your enemies to know what you are attempting.”
“Our creations?” He was confusing me again and I felt my anger rising.
“Oh. That was a slip of the tongue, my dear. Perhaps it is better to talk of what is happening than what could be.”
“Can you just fucking make sense for five minutes?” I yelled.
“Kaiyer is looking for the Ovule. Your executioners know of his intentions. They will attack him.”
“But I can’t do anything about that while I am here with you!” My lover was known to be invincible in combat, but I doubted even he could stand against all of his ex-generals.
“There is little we can do. But even a little is better than nothing. Enough drops of rain can carve through the hardest of stone in time.” He held his hand out to me. “Do you wish to see what transpires next? It might be hard to watch, but perhaps it will inspire your actions.”
“Fine.” I took a step toward the monkey man and grasped his left hand with mine.
Then we were burning.
But I felt no pain.
It was not my body that was burning. It was the bones and flesh of the city that had been Shlara’s Rest. A strange green and purple liquid flame coated everything. The heat did not reach me. I had to squint my eyes to see more than twenty feet in any direction. The air smelled of fire and ash.
“How did we get here? What has happened to this place?” I heard thousands of screams filling the city as humans tried to flee the flames or perish in them.
Entas pointed across the cobblestone street to a massive structure being consumed by flames.
“That is Malek’s estate.” As I said the words, I saw a horrible armored figure sprint down the street. The fire danced off the screaming demon skulls of his armor. The asymmetrical helmet hardly swayed as the figure ran with impeccable form. There was a wall around Malek’s home, and while it was mostly there for decoration, it still stood twenty feet high. The armored terror did not even slow its gait and leapt over the painted barricade with fluid ease.
“Kaiyer!” I moved toward the estate and screamed his name, but the figure was already gone and I doubted he could even hear me over the sounds of the dying city. I made it three steps before I stopped on the scorched pathway.
A large man with a shaved head sprinted down the road from the same direction as Kaiyer. He had an ugly scar over his nose and held thick-bladed swords in his ham-sized fists. Next to him was a blonde woman only as tall as the man’s shoulder. She held two shorter curved swords, and what the man had in a lumbering bear stride she equaled with a smooth gait, as graceful as Relyara. The pair’s clothes were lightweight affairs that may have once been colored white but were now stained red with blood and black with ash.
Thayer and Alexia.
Fear filled my stomach with panic. Entas and I stood out in the open space of the burnt street. I carried no weapon and neither did the old human next to me. I could not stand against them.
“Relax, Iolarathe. They cannot see us.” Entas laid a hand upon my shoulder.
The pair ran to the wall and leapt. Alexia’s movement was graceful and liquid. The woman did not even touch the wall when she flipped over it. The muscular bald man had to anchor the pommels of his swords on the top of the rock and then use his legs to kick himself over.
“That’s good! They really didn’t see us.” The old man breathed a sigh of relief, but the smirk on his face convinced me that he knew we were invisible.
We were ghosts.
While Thayer was climbing the wall, I saw two other men running toward the estate. Malek and Gorbanni. Their clothes were also ruined with blood.
Entas approached the wall. I followed and watched as the two O’Baarni jumped over it. We stood thirty feet from Malek and Gorbanni when they made the leap. Entas walked closer to the wall and then passed through the stone. I stared for a second because the wall actually seemed to part, bend, and warp out of the man’s way. For a moment I could peer through the barricade to the gardens behind it.
“Hurry!” He called from the other side. I reached my left hand out to the stone wall. It was as if the rock did not want to touch me and it parted with a strange urgency. I waved my hand quickly through the stone and it dipped and danced as if I was stirring oil and water.
I stepped through the wall.
I thought I would feel some sort of strange sensation, but other than the brief scent of dirt overpowering the taste of flames in my mouth, there was nothing. I was on the other side of the stone, facing the burning garden.
Entas waited at the entrance to Malek’s estate. I ran through the smoking remains of a once beautiful garden and reached the door right behind the small human. We passed through the thick wooden portal just as we had through the stone wall.
“The Ovule is in the basement below us.” I looked at my feet and wondered if I could pass through the floor to reach the level below. The dark wood began to bend around my booted feet and then I floated down to the basement like a feather.
I was disoriented for a few moments and I tried to recall where I believed the Ovule was kept. I knew Malek had a room devoted to the various artifacts he had discovered on their travels, but Kaiyer and I had never made it that far into his estate. Malek’s soldiers had captured us as soon as we entered the home and we never reached these lower levels.
I heard a clang near me. I spun around to see Kaiyer walk across the hallway ahead of me. He had removed his helmet as the ceiling was too low to accommodate the long horn of the horrible thing. I almost cried out to him, but I knew he would not hear me. It was painful to see him. To see the anguish in his eyes. I wanted to assure him I was okay, I was still with him. I wanted to touch him again.
Entas stood behind me. We turned the corner and walked down a short flight of stairs to the room that held Malek’s collection of artifacts. The walls were lined with suits of Elven armor, weapons, books, artwork, and musical instruments. The sight of them pained me almost as much as the grief in Kaiyer’s eyes. I had failed all of them. My race was reduced to a few relics, to be remembered as nothing but a horrible scourge, driven from the world as vermin by the heroic O’Baarni. History would remember us as monsters, as oppressors, as evil finally defeated. The beauty of what we had created, the world we had established and successfully maintained for our Gods would be forgotten.
On the far wall, I saw the painting I had made of the floating islands. I froze, my vision drawn to the artwork until I could see nothing else. It was exactly like the place from which Entas and I had come.
Except in this painting, Kaiyer was carefully depicted on the canvas.
My mind screamed back through my memories and I tried to recall where I had left the piece. Had I given it to Relyara? No. I recalled talking to my suitors about the artwork one morning. We had made the wager about hunting carrion beasts. Then another thought drifted into my head and interrupted the quest to figure out where Malek had found the artwork.
It was clearly Kaiyer in the painting.
If Malek had it, then he must have known that an Elven painted his friend.
A sharp thud ripped my attention from the painting and back to the father of my child. There was a chest on a simple dais in the center of the room and Kaiyer lifted the lid with armored fingers. Entas tugged on my arm and we walked around the handsome man to see his face. Inside the chest was an Ovule and it pulsed and glowed with the life of a thousand lightning bugs.
“I wish he could see me.” The words escaped my mouth before I even thought to speak them. His armor was horrific. Thousands of my people had seen it just before he ended them; those few of us who survived his wrath would always remember it in terror, but the face behind the helmet was still that of the simple young man who had taken care of my horses those many years ago. Entas grunted at my comment and I was both surprised and relieved that he did not utter another sentence of useless drivel.
Thayer and Alexia entered the room, their footsteps sounded clearly even over the screams outside; I could smell their terror and their blood, but Kaiyer was absorbed by the glowing orb.
“Kaiyer!” I yelled when Thayer advanced a few steps and quickly closed the distance.
“Iolar—” Kaiyer looked up from the chest and our eyes made contact. His mouth opened in surprise.
Then the point of Thayer’s sword emerged from between his eyes.
“No!” I screamed and felt my heart shatter with numbness. My nails raked across the ugly man’s face, but his skin and bones seemed to part like water before my hands. I shrieked again, but the humans did not hear me. Thayer yanked back on his blade and the sword made a sick, wet sound when it came free of Kaiyer’s skull.
My lover's body fell to the stone floor and blood flowed out like an undammed river. His eyes and mouth were still opened with surprise. After a few seconds, his body began to twitch in scattered movements that reminded me less of the invincible warrior he had been and more of a leaf caught in the wind. I tasted his blood in the air and it mixed with the horrible scent of his brain matter and the smell of fresh death.
“No. No. No.” I tried to touch his body, but my hands passed through as if he was made of smoke and fog.
“Do something!” I knew I was screaming, but I could not control my voice. The old man made a wincing expression with his face and then shrugged his shoulders.
“He can save himself if he wants to.”
“What the fuck does that mean? He is dead, you idiot!”
“Yet you just asked me to save him.” He laughed and I realized that I never wanted to kill someone as much as this fucking asshole. Except for Kaiyer’s generals. I wanted to rip them apart as well.
The tears came down my cheeks and I could do little more than weep. I kept attempting to touch his bloody face, but my hands just swirled his skin and bones around like a tortured oil painting.
“He’s dead. I’m dead. No one can help Vaiarathe. She is dead now.”
“What happened?” Malek said. I turned to look at the four humans.
“He was touching that orb. It was like he didn’t even hear us walk behind him.”
Thayer let out a long sigh and then tossed his swords down on the stone tile at his feet. He sat down and put his face in his palms before sobs began to tumble out of his wide chest.
“You did what you had to.”
“I killed my best friend!” Thayer moaned.
“He tried to kill us,” Alexia said softly.
“No. He just wanted to get the orb with his woman. We should have let him have it.” The big man tore his hands away from his tear streaked face and leveled a finger up at Malek. “You did this! You should have just fucking let him go! Why didn’t you just let him go?” He wiped the back of his massive forearm across his face.
“Do you want to tell Shlara that we should have let him go? With the Elven? Fuck you, Thayer!” Malek spat. “I’m the one that has to deal with her every fucking day. Kaiyer just tried to kill all four of us. He almost did.”